Jay,
Good work for a first attempt.
I liked your paragraph on :
"Eliminate fear, lack of communication and quotas and replace with leadership and employee involvement
Your employees can either work for you or against you. An atmosphere of fear cannot lead to excellence; nor can distrust and suspicion. It’s the employees that work with the basic processes that are you best asset. They are the ones whom see most clearly what goes wrong and what could be done better. Win them over by investing in them; give them training, and incentives for good ideas. Bring them on the teams that furfill improvement projects and allow them to spell out their ideas. Remember quotas and numerical targets can hold back performance or create discouragement, as in almost all cases it’s the process that limits the quality or quantity of your product. Personnel should be fostered and allowed to gravitate to area where they perform best."
It would have given you more weightage, if you had quoted Dr.Deming. The above paragraph align with Dr.Deming's Principle: 6,8 and 11.
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There are many staunch Dr.Deming's followers in this forum. They may have more information to add to my comments.
Driving out fear is a very important principle from Dr.Deming. This is also key for knowledge management. In today's world, we see people within the organization who withhold information and make the organization depend on them. People move between positions, don't record or document key findings of processes, just to keep the importance alive and many more...
All these are going back to Dr.Deming's principle, Drive out Fear.
Regards,
Govind.